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Monday, 7th May |
May Day Bank Holiday |
As noted below, Saturday is the 101st celebration of the Mad Day tradition locally. I put my in application for leave later than I should, what with the virus infection and all, and I've not yet heard back. This could be embarassing. And I need to test the new radios, which arrived last week, and make sure there are 4 good batteries among the 8 supplied. Short range testing is, of course, easy - just put all the rigs on the same channel and make sure they can hear each other. Range tests are a bit more difficult - I need 2 people for that, separated by a goodly distance. Half a mile to a mile will serve, rather than the 100 to 200 yards I'll likely get with the Binatone PMR446 radios.
Work this fortnight is another 12 shift - this one swapped from an early. As noted above, today is a bank holiday, so all the office staff won't be in, and there will be no on-site catering - bring your own food. Should be a quiet day - the other shift should have cleared all of last week's work. Equipment permitting...
It was indeed a quiet day - not the best to train a new freelance. It's a bit difficult to train someone when there's practically no material for them to learn on. We'll pay for this tomorrow.
The Motorola radios seem to have good batteries - I left them running all yesterday afternoon, and they stayed up: no evidence of low battery capacity. This is good. I should really get the relevant licence for them - at the moment, pressing transmit on one of these is illegal because of the lack of a licence from HMG.
Tuesday, 8th May |
It was a normal day at work - no real evidence of "Virtual Monday" syndrome. All material ingested well before day's end, except for one line feed that I had to wait for the quick repeat before I could ingest it. Not much else to say, except that the viral aches and pains seem to have gone - to the extent that I can actually sleep in a bed all night, for the first time in a month. Yaaay!
Wednesday, 9th May |
Thursday, 10th May |
Two quiet days - I'm still not quite over the virus, so I've not done much other than a lot of reading. But I did discover that one of the new radios is faulty - it never gets past the power on self-test. This is a little embarassing when you're doing a range test with the client. I'll have to send it back - but from previous experience, the supplier is very good about changing faulty kit. Must make 'phone call tomorrow. This will leave me with a mere 3 rigs for the parade on Saturday. But that should be enough - the fourth rig would probably have sat beside me on the field, anyway.
And leave for Saturday is confirmed. Not Friday, which means I'll have to look a little bit out when I collect the speakers, stands and cables - I have everything else. Except the required music - I haven't yet put my hand on the Elgar "Pomp and Circumstance Marches" disc I use each year.
Friday, 11th May |
A busy but productive day. Considerable commercials and promos ingested, which is good. Certainly more than a third of the total deliveries for the day.
Before that, I managed to find a new CD of the Elgar - this one is on EMI Classics, and features Sir Adrian Boult conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Boult is accepted as one of the greatest interpreters of Elgar's music, so all should be well there. Then I picked up the speakers, stands and cables from the local school we borrow them from, hurled all into Hopalong, and left for work, leaving Ally for Jane's use. And she complains of heavy steering - well, it's not powered like Hopalong's, and is somewhat heavier than Peanut was, but I don't notice, I just turn the wheel as required.
Saturday, 12th May |
May Day Celebrations |
Thank you, Jupiter Pluvious. You caused us lots of problems today. The morning was reasonably fine - occasional showers, nothing to worry about. But about one o'clock the heavens absolutely opened, to the extent that in about half an hour, the field where the dancing would have been held became too slippery to dance on.
So I had to improvise an installation in a local church, which has always been our fallback location in case of bad weather. And it worked, but there were problems with intelligibility, due to the reverberant acoustic and audience noise. My entire setup runs off one 13 amp socket, including the electric piano we use for the actual dancing music - I just provide processional music and speech reinforcement - the whole goes over the borrowed horn loudspeaker(s). I had one at the church - normal setup on the field is 3. For future reference, I need to visit the church, when not under time pressure, and see if I can hook into their PA system.
And I needed to turn the wick up a lot further than I thought I'd need, based on quick checks beforehand, when all the audience were in. That reverberant church acoustic plays hob with audience noise.
There was one problem - some thoughtless mother pushing a baby buggy managed to disconnect the main power feed, which I had to run across an aisle - the power socket is on a wall, and to be able to see what was happening, I needed to be on the far side of that aisle. So of course, everything just died, until I managed to push the plug back in. Mem: must get roll of gaffer tape for next year.
And all the parents, intent on watching and waving to their little darlings, kept walking across cables. Despite my putting chairs across the access. Does no-one think that an access way is blocked for a reason?
But at least the rain stopped just long enough to do the street parade, so that's a plus. We'll chalk this one up as "best available" and hope the weather improves next year.
Sunday, 13th May |
And ole Jupe is still doing his thing this morning.
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